Category: Movies

Patriotism

A must after seeing Mishima, of course. Oh my God, I can’t believe they are lying in a zen garden at the end of the movie. So, nothing actually happens in the film, and the storyline is very obvious ever since the beginning. However, I have strangely enjoyed the slow pacing of the film – it did not exactly feel slow at all, because the slowness suits its atmosphere perfectly. (Plus, it was accompanied by lovely yet dramatic music.)

What can I say, right now, this film feels like an addendum to Schrader’s Mishima film, except it was very exciting to see the actual Mishima as an actor here, as expected. You really don’t need to be that much of a actor to pull this film off, or so it seems to me, so the mood of the film was perfectly incorporated by the characters.

Considering that this is Mishima’s only film I suspect that Mishima just wanted to lie around naked with that actress, but on a second thought, he was sort of gay after all.

PS. This was the 69th Criterion movie I have seen. Quite special indeed, especially right after Salò.

Salò or 120 Days of Sodom

Of course it’s entirely different, but both films had the capability of making me want to stop watching and never go back again. It’s probably the most impressing film I have seen in a long time, and I don’t know if I can recommend it or not. In terms of human cruelty, this film is worse than I imagine Lilja 4-ever could ever be. Ultimately we just really don’t see that much cruelty, and this film itself is no exception. The worst scenes (the ones in which the characters are tortured to death) are only seen through the lenses of opera glasses so that you can’t actually see blood or torture.

The hour after seeing about half of the film and skipping through the rest, I have ranted on how the film made an impression on him. It made me wonder why we are so cruel and weak at the same time. I feel ashamed to be human; and that I was no better than them after all – I am one of the soldiers dancing at the end of the film. Ughh. I also watched the film shortly before going to sleep, and really, even though the film’s esthetics are impressive, I could not help but want to puke when the play with excrements was starting and by the end, I felt nauseating… That was how bad it is. You don’t really want to see them put male genitals on fire, not really.

I admire the male character who ran out of the car at the very beginning. He was shot immediately and definitely had the most dignified death out of all of them – and the most painless too.

So, all in all, this film was an experience and I am glad to have stumbled upon it, but I think I am still too much in shock to say anything substantial about it. I did think that it was a wonderful portrait of humanity (and its perverseness) though.

Italian for Beginners

It seems the director is the same woman who did “An Education”, indeed both movies are very female centered. Obviously these are love stories, but except for Giulia we actually see the female characters here much more developed than the male ones, who have comparably less harsh problems and generally sort of lack depth.

But in general, I like the characters very much; all of them. Jorgen and Giulia are the best, oh my goodness. I felt seriously touched when he held that amazingly simple yet unusual monologue. Everything just cries “It’s a disaster” to you but when I saw their happy faces, I couldn’t help but feel happy myself.

Danish comedies are just so… similar in a sense, and refreshing compared to everything else? About everything I have seen sort of fell into a similar pattern: Very black humor, an ensemble cast, relatively unknown yet very good actors and finally, unhappy and slightly crazy characters, often with health problems but always “your neighbor next door” type people. This movie is the only one with love stories but aside from that, the topics of death, your place in society and how to deal with it… they are all present, and the Dogme 95 principle makes you feel like it really could have happened anywhere.

The end came as a little bit of a surprise though. I absolutely did not expect any music, as their presence is unusual in Dogme 95 films. But then again, I suppose it makes sense that they would play something in a touristy restaurant in Venice. It was a great end.

Thanks to web.archive.org there is quite a nice list of all Dogme films, of which I have seen “Festen” and “Idioterne” and I am still very interested in “Mifune” and “Lovers”. As for the other movies, I have the bad feeling that most Dogme films are just not very good, which ended up being one of the reasons why the concept is not all that popular. It is rare for a film to have a storytelling as strong as the 3 I have seen, including “Italian for Beginners”.

Mishima – A Life in Four Chapters

It is sad when you have to stop watching a film, especially when you want to see it very, very much. This happened to me with Mishima about 1:15 into the movie, and it was just impossible to find an hour somewhere with internet so I could finish the film. And so, my thoughts on the film might be heavily influenced by this unfortunate circumstance.

In fact, I know nothing about Mishima except for his dramatic death. I have never read his works, yet I am strangely fascinated with how such a character can exist in the world. The movie is a quite wonderful depiction of the author and only strengthens my fascination with him, yet it barely explains anything. I find that acceptable though, given the strange yet aesthetic nature of the film. Very Japanese, I’d say.
One thing I did get from the film is Mishima’s strange yet so understandable view on beauty, and his plays are fascinating in an absurd way very similarly to how Kobo Abe is fascinating, even if his plays go into a completely different direction. There are some similarities though; they both seem to be interested in the cripples of mind and body, and they both like short, poignant dialogues.

The end was a typical case of Marie Antoinette x You-know-the-outcome-but-you-still-feel-the-suspense. It’s like Sofia Coppola who doesn’t show Marie Antoinette’s death – I can’t believe they cut out the scene in the moment he just started committing seppuku! On the other hand, I was moved by his speech for the simple reason that nobody wanted to listen, and I felt amazingly sorry for this man who was on the verge of death. I suppose seppuku is a form of art for him after all, but nevertheless, a feeling of horror is going down my chest.

Now I really want to see Patriotism, briefly mentioned in the film. I have this imagination that the film must be immensely interesting; even though or maybe because it is so short. I also want to see the man itself, conveniently starring as the main character.

Mishima is a very strange film; it doesn’t explain and leaves Mishima as a person full of contradictions. It’s more like a half-way completed puzzle, waiting for you to fill in the gaps, and acts more as an exposé rather than faithful retelling or an analysis of the fascinating character Mishima was.

The trouble with Harry

I have read quite a few “secondary literature” about this film, i.e. people who absolutely love the film and write laudatios on why the film is not boring but a masterpiece of humor. Now, since I have not heard anything negative about the film yet, I can only say: Why would it be boring?

Sure, Hitchcock is mainly a suspense filmmaker and his movies are supposed to be shocking criminal suspense or horror flicks. But I have always known that “The trouble with Harry” is going to be a comedy – and what a comedy it is!

I am totally in love with the black humor of the film. I found the characters to be very funny, very lovely and good-hearted (apart from the fact that they take somebody else’s death with a grain of salt), and was especially smitten with the somewhat sweet yet humorous love story unfolding between the two main couples of the story. How wonderful is that?

Of course, this kind of film relies heavily upon the actors. “Vertigo” was good even though Kim Novak is kind of awkward in the role (so I think at least, from “Kiss me, Stupid” I know that she is not too bad), but “The trouble with Harry” would have completely failed if, for example, Shirley MacLaine were a shitty actress (and since it was her debut work, I’d say I am more than a little impressed). I have never seen John Forsythe before, but like him very much too now.

All in all, I enjoyed the film very much – it was probably one of the best non-emotional films I have seen in quite awhile. It’s full of great details, a lot of fun to see and all around a pretty sweet film; I find the film to be deeper than it looks, which is an amazingly rare quality.

(500) Days of Summer

Sappy british pop music! Hahahaha. I actually hated the girl ever since it started. So pretentious, uff. XD I hate the girl’s actress (perhaps I would have hated her less if she was Scarlett Johansson, or Kirsten Dunst, or Natalie Portman!) But, I mean, hey, it’s about a boy who is romantic (nothing wrong with that) and a girl whose parents are divorced and thus has a screwed up view on love (annoying). On top of that, her actress is amazingly annoying – I think I have seen her in a bunch of other shitty chick flicks and have always disliked this kind of actress. She blew up every single passable scene, I can’t believe there are actresses this bad.

On top of that, the style of the architecture in the film is atrocious. His “building design” looks like a child’s drawing (which is still sort of acceptable because he is supposed to be a bad architect), but when he takes her around to show her buildings, I could barely believe how amazingly boring and crappy those buildings are. No half decent architect is into 1900’s skyscrapers; I don’t know what’s wrong with the writers there. It all ties into my impression of the film being very smitten with boring, conservative values – old, inoffensive rock music, 50’s dresses and unartistic architecture. Sad.

A propos the 50’s dresses, I guess this is a good time to admit that I actually love everything else about the film. The dysfunctional yet natural love story, the character’s clothing style, especially hers, and the very lovely way they depict how he falls in love with her so earnestly that you cannot help but hate her. It is the type of a different view on a love story this film is providing that would probably have made it a more importantNo film in my life if I was younger. However, I have never had a love story that was remotely close to this. Every single person who I felt serious about most likely felt serious about me as well; so ultimately, there is basically no connection between me and the general setting of the film.

I mean hey, just look at those awesome Nouvelle Vague and Bergman references! Pure brilliance, oh my God!

There IS a good female character in the story, of course. The sister! She is everything a girl really should be. She’d make a great engineer, wahahaha.

The final question is: Would the movie have worked if the genders were reversed? Apparently not at all.
Come to think of it, every single man I have been very, very into has never, ever complained to me about another girl.

Beetlejuice

It took me something like a month or something to finish the film. It’s one of the rare cases when I have a hard time going through the first half hour or 45 minutes of the film, and then get into it so I finish it with a great feeling. That exactly happened here.

I liked the first ten minutes until the main character’s death and subsequent weird situation, and found it very painful how they really were not helped at all. The whole universe was rude and I found myself rooting for them because I felt so sad for them seeing their lovely house demolished. I also didn’t really get why Winona Ryder’s character was so odd at the beginning, and why she failed at supporting them as well.

Later on, however, I have come to enjoy the character’s weirdness, even the crazy mother. By the time the dinner party was dancing around, I was wholeheartedly enjoying the silly choreography and had a good laugh. I had a vague idea beforehand that the whole story would turn into something good, and the end actually did leave a feel-good impression. I like these stories in which things come to a wholly good end, and in this case, it felt believable. The events actually shaped the characters and turned them into more understanding humans. Very touching and, well, lovely.

Almost everybody I know finds the film odd, and really, the blatant 90’s style of the film coupled with Tim Burton’s weakness for weird things really IS odd. But then, it gave me a nice surprise to see how much I ended up enjoying the story despite its dragging beginning.

My perhaps favorite movie blog, always a source of inspiration especially when it comes to modern unusual gems, has finally put up an archive of their films, both sorted by year and by title. The one by year is particularly interesting, as it shows how immensely lacking this list is for silent films. Oh my God. But, there are a few on the list that I have not seen, and for films up to the 60’s, their archive provides a nice “must sees” list.
Most of all, the Movies in Frames kids are probably my age with a similar taste for weird, modern movies but appreciating the old classics. The only difference I can easily see is, in fact, my stronger love for silent films. (Maybe I should propose some screenshots some day! I mean oh God: No Stroheim, no Pabst, no D.W. Griffith?)

Here, as an example, is what I find interesting from the list up to 1960, but have not seen. In fact, I was surprised at how much I actually have seen from there:

• 1922 Phantom (Murnau)
• 1923 Safety Last!, The Balloonatic, Coeur fidèle
• 1925 The Gold Rush
• 1927 Wings
• 1928 The Patsy, L’étoile de mer
• 1930 L’age d’or
• 1931 The public enemy
• 1932 Grand Hotel, Scarface, White Zombie, Freaks, Love me Tonight, A Farewell to Arms
• 1933 Queen Christina,
• 1935 Top Hat, A Night at the Opera, The 39 Steps, The Bride of Frankenstein
• 1936 Reefer Madness
• 1937 Pepé le Moko
• 1938 Marie-Antoinette
• 1939 Gone with the Wind, Mr. Smith goes to Washington, The Wizard of Oz
• 1940 The Philadelphia Story
• 1941 The Maltese Falcon, The Lady Eve, Sullivan’s Travels, Ball of Fire
• 1942 Cat People, Now Voyager
• 1943 I walked with a Zombie, Les anges du péché, Ossessione
• 1944 Double Indemnity, Arsenic and Old Lace, Ivan the Terrible
• 1945 Brief Encounter, Spellbound, Roma Citta Apertà, Christmas in Connecticut, I know where I’m going, And then there were none
• 1946 The Big Sleep, Notorious, It’s a wonderful life
• 1947 Monsieur Verdoux, The Bishop’s Wife
• 1948 The Bicycle Thief, The Red Shoes, 3 Godfathers, Rope
• 1949 The Third Man
• 1950 Harvey
• 1951 The River (Renoir), The day the earth stood still, Strangers on a train
• 1952 Ikiru, Moulin Rouge (Houston), Monkey Business
• 1953 The moon is blue, The wild one, How to marry a millionaire
• 1954 Senso, Johnny Guitar, Seven brides for seven brothers, Gojira, On the water front
• 1955 To catch a thief, Rebel without a cause
• 1956 The Burmese Harp, Forbidden Planet, The Searchers, Dial M for Murder
• 1957 12 Angry Men, Nights of Cabiria
• 1958 Touch of Evil, The Hidden Fortress, Gigi, Bell Book and Candle, The long hot summer
• 1959 The Nun’s Story, Le déjeuner sur l’herbe, Ohaiyo
• 1960 Rocco and his brothers, Ocean’s Eleven, The Magnificent Seven, Jigoku, Psycho

Dune

You definitely need to read the book to see the film, there is no way one can see this film without knowing a lot about its universe beforehand. The film is indeed just as confusing as everybody says, and I remember very well why I dropped it after 15 minutes the first time I saw it. Nothing gets a proper introduction; heck most of the storyline becomes completely pointless! (Why is this Duncan character in there? How the heck did the main characters actually in love? Why is Princess Irulan a completely irrelevant character in the story and why did Sting never do anything at all besides this random duel at the end?)

Basically, the story is all but confusion, unless you know what is happening. Even then, I feel like David Lynch is merely a bad replacement for Jodorowsky. The cast Jodorowsky has brought out (Salvador Dali, Orson Welles, Gloria Swanson, David Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Alain Delon, Mick Jagger AND Pink Floyd for music) is so scarily good that I cannot help but wish *that* movie had been made instead. So if it were to be 10 hours, it would have been 10 hours of artistical goodness, not this half-hearted, horribly edited crap.

I believe Lynch has a good original cut and there would have been much more interesting scenes if the film were not shortened to 2 hours something. The Lynch style, which unfortunately also makes the film more confusing, is actually the best thing about the whole film. Dune, strangely enough, fits this sort of 80s, sort of steampunk odd style which is supposed to be noir, or something.

In the end, I am very glad for having seen this classic which I have been meaning to see for a long time now – but apart from that, there really is no reason to see not this, not even as a Lynch fanboy. I am still lamenting the loss of Jodorowsky’s version, after all. This is a serious case of “Read the book.”

The Great Dictator

This movie is absolutely wonderful and brilliantly funny, if only this strange feeling would not be there. For some inexplicable reason, I feel very disturbed when I see this image of people looking up and talking about a better world in which “nobody hates us”. (This gesture is just so Russian propaganda somehow?) Chaplin’s speech at the end was just too much. Maybe it’s the German synchronization, the tone just gives me weird associations.

Apart from that though, this film is a wonderful depiction of humans, society and all that. Typically Chaplin-esque romantic, sure, but the comedic elements make you laugh because they just nail those characters (Hitler! Stalin! Wahaha).

Is this Joseph Tura? Oh my… he actually is NOT! But their faces are so similar…a little bit like John Cleese, just seeing this face makes me want to laugh. Thus Schultz is my favorite character, but then again, I must say that I also liked Goebbels Gorbitsch very much, ahahaha.

With this film, xx get s a whole new meaning. XD I can’t believe I watched such a funny classic this late (before, I have only seen parts of it but never got the whole story). I am still primarily a Keaton fan, but this film makes the decision more difficult yet again.